Hartford County finished February with 488 single-family contracts. The total was more than 15% below last February, and comparable to the activity level that we saw in 2010-2014.
As recently noted, the bottleneck in the market is on the supply side. There are plenty of buyers, but there are not enough sellers to balance the equation. The number of contracts in a particular month has recently been closely linked to the number of new listings. For February, 471 new listings translated into 488 contracts. In January 422 new listings turned into 449 contracts.
If owners decide that they want to sell their homes, then there are going to be buyers ready to bid for the properties. But until a significant number of owners make that choice the market is going to be competitive for buyers.
We’ve recently heard stories from listing agents indicating that buyers are aggressively competing for available homes. One agent, when discussing their upcoming deadline for offers, told us that they already had 14 bids. Additionally, they said that they had been answering buyers agents honestly when asked about whether a bid of $x would be competitive, discouraging buyers who were certainly going to lose from wasting their time writing up a non-competitive offer. It would not surprise us if they ended up with 20+ offers by the deadline, with many of them well above the asking price.
Buyers seeking homes in the most popular towns, and in good condition, need to be ready for the competition. There are steps they can take to optimize their buyer profile.
Potential sellers have a great opportunity to exit their property for a premium price. Not all submarkets are as competitive as the above anecdote implies, but this is still a favorable opportunity to sell for just about every type of property. Reach out if you want to discuss your options.
